Some nights I find myself scrolling through the endless options available to me on Netflix, trying to find some way to pass the time between dinner and sleep.
The other night, one title stood out to me, and just 24 minutes later, I knew I’d just watched one of the most important things I’d ever see.
Extremis is a Netflix original documentary that focuses on the end of life care at an Intensive Care Unit in a Californian hospital. In the short film, we see doctors, families and patients face harrowing end-of-life decisions.
The documentary is only 24 minutes long. There's no time for niceties, or introductions to patients or doctors. End-of-life care is complicated.
But somehow, 24 minutes is all we need to understand how hard a decision it is to decide when and how someone should die.